06.16.10
Posted in Inquiry-based Learning, Learning spaces at 2:32 am by Sheila Webber
I am blogging again from the conference organised by the Centre for Promoting Learner Autonomy. This morning there is a student plenary on Learning spaces and experiences, led by Louise Goldring, Jamie Wood, Stephen Logan and Chris Corker. Louise started the session off. She explained that the plenary was organised by the Student Learning and Teaching Network which was formerly the CETL Student Network. They have annual events and is made up of student and recent graduate volunteers. They see themselves “Promoting students as valid and active members of learning communities” (there is more about their goals on the website I just linked to). There are networking opportunities, workshops, encouragement to write in various ways and recognition of what members are doing. Currently they are making a video about how students are active in learning. They have started a Facebook campaign “I’m a student, not a customer” (I’ll sign up for that!) and developing case studies. Many of these activities are supported by the Higher Education Academy, and have been very actively supported by the CTETLs.
Jamie Woods talked about a survey that had been done, asking students across the UK what they thought about learning spaces, they also surveyed other projects and took a lot of photos. They had put it together as a collage at http://www.vuvox.com/collage/detail/0282fbc344 (it hasn’t been published yet, it might be by the time you read this!).
We had two accounts from students. Chris Corker talked about his personal experience at Sheffield Hallam. He said that he had met up with people in the hour before their history sessions, in a cafe, and they would start talking about study. The cafe mentality also carried over to the teaching session (in a good way) and the lecturer’s inquiry based approach had helped with this. He wasn’t keen on using the library because it was too noisy, and full, whereas he expected it to be quieter and more conducive to study. He suggested that rather than having a dedicated centre, since you could see people learning everywhere around campus, “call the entire university the learning centre”.
Stephen Logan then talked about how the space could itself be the object of learning (for example, subjects that do fieldwork) and some activities need very specific spaces (like music composition). He talked about a particular geography fieldtrip. Students were given personal scenarios (e.g. a migrant worker) and think about that person’s map, what would be on it. He also talked about an example from Australian National University which involved thinking about development issues, developing research skills but also thinking about ethical issues. He talked more about the way fieldwork, involving a range of learning spaces, could develop theory from serious research, and also a range of transferable skills. Stephen stressed that “The body is the one constant learning space”: thinking about the physiological needs that should have an impact on designing learning spaces. This was the thought that seemed to strike people in the audience most, by the way. The “time” aspect of space was also discussed with the audience, and physical comfort and and sense of time were linked. Also the time of day has an impact.
Louise Goldring returned to highlight some issues that had struck her in the survey. There were different answers sometimes given for “where do you learn best” and “where do you choose to go to learn”. Another interesting point was the emphasis on the need for quiet, serious places which help learners to focus on study. There was also a lot about open, airy, natural spaces. They wanted discussion space with academics. Those who mentioned social spaces were more likely to say that the spaces had affected what they do (rather than just keeping them on track). The results did show that there wasn’t one answer for everyone: there were different reactions and needs, but also the same people wanted different things at different times.
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06.15.10
Posted in Inquiry-based Learning, Learning spaces at 9:18 am by Sheila Webber
I am blogging from the conference organised by the Centre for Promoting Learner Autonomy (at Sheffield Hallam University), currently the plenary session. Ivan Moore, Phil Levy and Paul Taylor contributed to this session. Ivan Moore (from here) started with Wesch’s well-known video “A vision of students today” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o. We were then asked to think about what a “learning space” meant to us. My immediate space was that it was anywhere where you might learn - which means anywhere. Other people fed things back such as discussion in the pub, in your head, the space you are in, comfortable (and uncomfortable) space, providing opportunity, motivation, and space to make mistakes. One question that emerged in the brief buzz session was about the difference between teaching spaces and learning spaces (if any).
“Spaces” were identified subsequently as physical, virtual, intellectual, curriculum/discipline, social, community and professional, as well as temporal spaces. There are lots of issues around who designs and owns the spaces (the teacher? university? learner?)
The introduction to the topic of student autonomytalked about what autonomy means identified factors for autonomy such as motivation, perceived control and perceived competence. There were implications: for example to do with when people learn, how they apply and evaluate what they have learnt, and how we can know where they are on their learning journey.
Phil Levy (from here) took over from Ivan Moore to talk about the concept of inquiry, and how it should be inclusive. She talked about why to use an Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) approach: to encorage us to be critical and enquiring, “to engage with the world’s complex and pressing questions and problems.” Sp her question is about which spaces can develop learning and knowledge building. She distinguished between personal conceptual change (knowledge construction) and improvement of ideas in a domain (knowledge building) and her vision of learning encompassed creating spaces for both knowledge construction and construction. Phil put forward some quotations from students, in which they talked about how participating in IBL had made them feel more free and more grown up, developing towards their future lives beyond university. She also quoted some feedback on working in spaces at Sheffield, with there being an emphasis on flexibility, and a change in realtionships and control (encouraging students to take more of a “front line role” and staff to take back and move more to a partnership/ support role. In the final part of her contribution, Phil talked about creating intellectual and physical spaces. Issues here include creating intellectual space (e.g. questions not always being set by the tutor) and balancing control with support.
Paul Taylor (from here) took over to talk about “Knowledge spaces and graduateness”.
He characterised them using a quotation from Wright, as “regimes through which truth knowledge and power are created”. He talked about a space in the Reinvention Centre where there is no fixed or obvious “front” so it has to be flexibly rethought each time.
Paul moved on to talk about how institutional policies, statements and practices (e.g. being a university that focuses on an international and multinational persepctive) have an impact, as do curriculum forces such as the QAA subject benchmark statements. The knowledge spaces “that emerge at an institution” are going to create knowledge spaces which affect how they experience graduateness, or indeed how they feel they ought to experience graduateness at a specific institution.
Summing up at the end, Ivan Moore reminded us how broadly we should interpret spaces. These are themes, obviously, that will be taken up later in the conference (not least by the delegates!)
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04.28.10
Posted in Inquiry-based Learning, Scholarship of teaching and learning at 10:26 pm by Sheila Webber
The latest issue of Practice and Evidence of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (vol 5 no. 1) is out
http://www.pestlhe.org.uk/index.php/pestlhe/issue/view/14
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04.20.10
Posted in Inquiry-based Learning, Scholarship of teaching and learning at 3:35 pm by Sheila Webber
This is the final post about the Beyond Borders conference at Oxford University, where the focus was on Open Educational Resources (OER). Since this is a blog about Inquiry Based Learning (IBL), I thought I should finish by reflecting on the relationship between OERs and IBL (not something that was addressed directly at the conference).
Firstly, OERs can form part of the knowledge base that we stimulate learners to explore as part of an inquiry. For example, the Oxford University podcasts provide expert perspectives and insights, and in some cases present debate or discussion which could stimulate further questions and inquiry. Since many of the OERs that were discussed took the form of talks or lectures, then learners need skills in filtering the required meaning from this information format. Such skills are needed to make sense of any lecture (note taking, concentration, active listening, willingness to form questions etc.), with particular emphasis on knowing how to identify the most relevant information and arguments, and judging when to fast-forward and when to follow an argument through.
Secondly, it strikes me as more challenging to create OERs which are part of an IBL approach than it is to create OERs that “transmit” information. An IBL session may be difficult to record (since it is likely to involve multiple discussions and breakouts, requiring several recorders or cameras to capture in full), and so does not easily lend itself to podcast or videocast format. If it were successfully recorded, it still might be more difficult for non-participants to make sense of what is going on. Briefings for IBL exercises could be reusable, as could material produced by students themselves as part of IBL. CILASS has produced IBL case studies, but I would see these as material for training/development, rather than as OERs (if you disagree do comment!)
I don’t think they are available openly, but I do remember hearing about an exercise in an East Asian studies class at Sheffield, where the lecturer had made some recordings of her Japanese friends talking about the issue of smoking. Clusters of OERs, providing different perspectives on the same issue, could be good stimuli for forming research questions in IBL.
In one of the discussions, a delegate was talking about the difficulty of putting together a class that was mostly made from OERs (this was the challenge set in a JISC project). She pointed out that academics were actually “reusing” material all the time (e.g. their own and colleagues’ notes; diagrams from journal articles; definitions from textbooks), and I think that, from that perspective, some of the OER initiatives may be artificially narrowing the definition of an OER.
Finally, Tim Unwin’s call for attention to “integrated learning” rather than “content” draws further attention to the need to think about exactly what kind of OER would be useful to integrate into a holistic learning experience.
And REALLY finally … the last talk at the conference was from Professor Robin Wilson - Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Open University, and a Fellow at Keble College at Oxford, on Communicating mathematics: a hisorical and personal journey. He reminded one about the long history of communicating, and reusing, information (and made me think about the communication tools and channels used in my own discipline). He also caused a minor stir amid the twittering and podcasting, since he was using an overhead projector and acetate slides: slides which were evidently eminently reusable and reused, showing that OERs don’t necessarily have to be digital…
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Posted in Inquiry-based Learning at 1:53 pm by Sheila Webber
This is the 3rd liveblog post from the Beyond Borders conference at Oxford University. The focus: Open Educational Resources (OER). Dr. Fred Mednick, Founder of Teachers Without Borders ,was the 3rd speaker prevented by volcanic ash from presenting in person. His presentation is on slideshare at http://slidesha.re/9JndWg and he was focusing on school teachers collaborating to create content. The website is at http://www.teacherswithoutborders.org/, and it states that TWB “supports teachers in their desire to collaborate in order to address pressing community development needs; supports free and open educational resources; empowers the voices of innovative and compassionate teachers and community leaders; and nurtures partnerships from the village to the government.” I have to confess that I was starting to conference-out at this point and my concentration wasn’t as good as it should be, but I’ll go back and look at the website, as it’s an interesting initiative. Like the previous speaker (Tim Unwin) he talked about the importance of culture and context, and stressed that OER wasn’t just about “digital”. He also emphasised the “role of information in saving lives”, though (disappointingly from my perspective) he didn’t mention the role of information and library specialists.
There was a panel session on challenges, which included Oxford podcasters Peter McDonald, David Robertson and previous speakers Marianne Talbot and Andy Lane. They were asked about whether they had any specific purposes in mind before doing podcasts: these included the public good aspect, and also contributing to the array of respected public lectures that were online. Another aspect was sustainability; Andy Lane (Open University) talked about possibilities including generating revenue off the back of free content & recruiting new students, but said that it would also be seen as outreach activity (part of their remit). In his view (a good point I think) sustainability can only come if the institution fits the activity into its strategy, making it a central part of what is done. David Robertson talked about OER as helping to combat a Department’s parochialism.
Asked about the single biggest challenge to OER, Fred Mednik said it was “institutions themselves”; Andy Lane said it would be when we stopped focusing on “Educational Resources” (i.e. the means rather than the ends); Peter McDonald said it was in thinking in the new media, rather than translating from the old.
Another issue that was raised was use of published material that was ok in the context of a lecture, but not if openly on the web. Andy Lane pointed to examples e.g. of MIT (I think) making a deal with Elsevier that a certain number of diagrams could be used in open content: he felt this area would develop, if slowly. One audience member also pointed out that there was big money in the US for OER. Some people thought that some of these issues would not be issues in year to come e.g. students would expect to be able to preview their future lecturers, teachers would be more adept at repurposing others’ material.
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Posted in Inquiry-based Learning at 11:35 am by Sheila Webber
This is my second post from the Beyond Borders conference at Oxford University. After the coffee break, Open Content (OER) Case Studies from Oxford were introduced by Peter Robinson. The JISC-sponsored project OpenSpires has had 180 items from 130 academics. This includes material that is particularly “Oxford” including tutorial type discussions. (Rather larger is their presence on iTunesU where they have over 1500 items.) To make it sustainable they are trying to get departments to DIY as regards podcasting is concerned (in terms of recording, editing and also filling in paperwork to do with intellectual property, getting people to sign up to a Creative Commons licence). My personal comment is that this may be “sustainable” from a central viewpoint, but I wouldn’t see that being accepted in many, already overworked, departments.
Some academic contributors to the project also talked. Marianne Talbot, a philosophy lecturer at Oxford University, who was top download on iTunesU (1800 a week), said that she found it “humbling” and mentioned the fan mail about her online philosophy lectures. Martin Kemp, a Professor in the History of Art Department, talked about his latest lecture series “La Bella Principessa: A Leonardo Discovered”. He felt that the material coming from Oxford University gave it a certain authority, and could counter the mis-information that is out there on the internet. He warned people to read licences carefully, to avoid giving away more rights than seem appropriate. Dr Tristram Wyatt(Animal Behaviour Research Group) talked about a collaboration with a South African university that involved reusing, but crucially also customising, material. One issue that has now arisen is that some funding only covers costs of the less developed country and not the very real costs of the other university in helping to repurpose material to make it contextually meaningful.
Issues that arose during discussion included: patients being (unsurprisingly) being unwilling to give consent for material on medical education to be posted to the web; whether students would stay at home rather than come to the lecture; problems of keeping an online worlshop current (in the fast-moving subject of influenza)
After the lunch break we were shown a recording made by Tim Unwin, (he was another speaker trapped, by the ash cloud, in Finland) on Open Educational Resources and ICT for Development. He is Professor of Geography at Royal Holloway University of London and UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, and since I found his the most stimulating talk, I will give a bit more detail. He was reporting on experience of creating material for use in Africa. A key question he had was “Why are OERs not more widely used by people in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) when intuitively they are so valuable?” He identified that OERs should go beyond content and licences, pointing out that a lot of “courseware” isn’t actually that used. So, he was more interested in how people can create open “integrated learning contexts” and put forward the idea that content is “one of the least important things about learning”. I should say that I agree with this perspective, and I had already tweeted that learning was not primarily about “stuff” (see the twitterstream at http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23beyond2010). He referred seveal times, by the way, to the UNESCO OER wiki, http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=Main_Page.
Unwin pointed out that most OER initiatives are led by people in North America and Europe (rather than those in Africa) and felt that much online discussion was unproductive. He identified the perceived needs of African users of OER: lack of content resources, high cost of books and journals, poor quality teaching, poor infrastructures and lack of understanding of technology’s benefits. He went on to talk about the “realities”, drawing on his experience through four projects. A main purpose was to “build shared capabilities in using ICTs in educational delivery”. He felt, however, the projects hadn’t been as successful as hoped. One issue was that the content itself wasn’t necessarily that high quality, and it hadn’t been possible to tag everything for quality. More successful was work on developing material using African story-telling (there are examples on the wiki linked above).
Unwin reflected on reasons for not making progress. He pointed out that the usually-identified culprits (lack of bandwidth, electricity, computers and software) are not really such problems any more. Instead he found challenges were: changes in personnel (when sustained leadership & commitment was needed); funding mechanism diversity; time commitments; and failure to understand “meanings” (e.g. ICT4D is not just about kit). Other real issues include the vulnerable structure and financing of higher education; adherence to didactic teaching (e.g. lecturers may make needed money by selling lecture notes); dependant mentalities (on external help) and the role of lecturers.
Turning to the UK he raised issues of commodification, whether people really used OERs in their own work, and also whether we could (realistically) spend the time to help academics in other countries (with that last point, he obviously hoped we could…)
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Posted in Inquiry-based Learning at 9:35 am by Sheila Webber
I’m at the Beyond Borders conference at Oxford University. They have the JISC-sponsored project Openspires (http://openspires.oucs.ox.ac.uk/) which “makes Oxford podcasts available as Open Content Resources (OER); content that is available for reuse and redistribution by third parties globally, provided that it is used in a non-commercial way and is attributed to its creator”. Due to the volcanic ash (currently halting air travel), international speakers were suddenly not able to attend in person, and there was an admirable job done to set up live feeds etc. so they could still participate.
In focus were Open Educational Resources (OER), which can be defined as “digitized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and re-use for teaching, learning and research” (cited by Hylen as: UNESCO, 2002)
The introduction from Melissa Highton, identified how, at Oxford University, this is part of a research-based approach to teaching and learning (which is obviously interesting in a Sheffield and IBL context). She also related it to the long tradition of public engagement, through public lectures etc., making it a continuation no necessarily just a new direction.
Andy Lane, from OpenLearn, the Open University, identified a number of reasons why a university might make its educational resources open, which includes being a test bed, participating in a sharing culture, saving time/money (at least in the medium or longer term) and also being “Consistent with OU’s commitment to social justice and widening participation”. Openlearn will have a new front end, emphasising “short form content” such as video clips (using iTunesU, Youtube, SCORE etc.), although the “long form content” (online units it takes time to work through) will also be retained. They are using Moodle (which fairly recently took over from their inhouse-developed virtual learning environment). Bridging the gap between informal and formal learning was stressed, with “content” as the hook, and flexibility also important. They have 126,00 registered, but a few million visitors who have not, so a key issue is trying to identify how people are using the material.
Jan Hylen, formerly of the OECD, was on a very clear video feed. He identified that despite growing competition between universities, people and universities are sharing material on the internet. There are the Open Source, Open Access and Open Educational Resources initiatives. Therefore an OECD study focused on OER, with particular interest in Intellectual Property Rights, sustainable cost/benefit models, incentives and barriers, and acces and usefulness of existing resources, plus (given the nature of the OECD) looking at policy issues.
They found that a survey sent to top people at universities had a low response rate (no surprise, frankly), and then revised their strategy and targetted individual people, with better results. They felt that “the sad thing” was that few of the initiatives they found out about tracked how their material was being used. They identified 3 categories: public or institutional backed programmes; a community approach (grass roots e.g. “Open Course”, “Free Curricula Center”) and what they termed “in between” models such as MERLOT, Connexions and ARIADNE. He showed a matrix: big/small and institution/community (with e.g. Wikipedia top right as “Big/Community”). Hylen did a smaller follow up study, and he observed that the balance seems to be moving from smaller enthusiast initiatives towards larger institutional initiatives. There was an interesting table of motivations for producing and sharing OER in governments, institutions and individuals, which is on p70 of the main publication from the project which is at http://tinyurl.com/yk37rc6 and the sectionsnumerous other sections in this report (Giving knowledge for free, OECD, 2007) are worth looking at e.g. sustainability issues.
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02.15.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:29 pm by gga08hkt
Hello!
Ali and Hannah met today and had a very productive session. With the help of Chris we managed to sort out the technology problems we were having when we saved our editing. This should make the beginning of each session much quicker to get into and far more productive!
We also stumbled across an excellent free music site, much to our delight. This will hopefully mean that there will be some decent background music to accompany the film, making it more interesting to watch and adding another sensory dynamic to the film (well, that’s our aim anyway).
Progress is happening, and we have been using previous clips to their maximum benefit. On Wednesday we are hoping to get some fresh filming. This will involve filming of both new and older SAN members. We are also hoping it will give us some exciting new footage to work with. We will also be looking to filming each of the working groups in action to find out what it is exactly they do and to try and relay this message within the film.
We’ll be sure to update you on how our plans turn out. Rest assured though that “Dreamers of dreams” is definitely becoming a reality.
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02.07.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:44 am by gga08hkt
Hello! Two members of the film group, Kanchana and Hannah met today to work through our first film group project for the Staff-Student Conference in April. We have had great fun going through previous clips taken by former film group members. We have been inspired and enlightened to create what will hopefully be a successful film highlighting the “legend of CILASS.”
Considering we are beginners we have taken the opportunity to develop new IT skills though Windows media player and Windows movie maker. This has allowed us to be more creative and explore different aspects of making films.
It has dawned on us that though this is our first film it is likely it is also our last for CILASS. We hope this film will help teach others the importance of CILASS and how it can affect the way we learn and engage with our subject.
As SAN members we have come to realise taking this project is in itself IBL and we are devleoping transferable skills through hands on experience through different softwares and equipment available to us. We will endeavour to let you know our progress thoughout the film’s production over the coming weeks. We realise this film project is a challenge, so fingers crossed that we can get it done in time…
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01.05.10
Posted in Scholarship of teaching and learning, Educational Development at 5:26 pm by Tim
Back in December, a CILASS Fellow delegation went to the Society for Research in Higher Education conference in Newport. This consisted of Clare Rishbeth, Sheila Webber, and myself, and before giving our own three-paper symposium on the final day, we attended as many of the other papers and panels as possible. There was an awful lot going on, so below you’ll find our partial reflections of the conference; and Sheffield folk might want to read them along with Luke Desforges’ reflections, as he picked up a different but overlapping series of themes.
Three big ideas that we noticed were:
1. The importance of communities, especially for innovators in learning and teaching; these communities might be real or virtual, within the institution or beyond, but having other people to rely on when doing something a bit different really seemed critical for bringing about change. This is, perhaps, a pertinent point to make in relation to CILASS at this particular historical moment. There was a generous amount of critique of academic identities (nothing more interesting than your own life!)… the interesting points to us were where this overlapped with other (i.e. professional) identities and roles. There still seemed to me an emphasis on the academic as primarily teacher / research which potentially marginalises some FE and post 1992 roles. Even in ‘trad’ unis the new research funding / grading emphasis of knowledge transfer / impact and the need for academic staff with strong links to other sectors of employment suggests that we need to look at connectivity between academic / non academic in terms of building communities.
2. There were a number of representatives of CETLs present, many of which reporting impressive work - one that seemed interesting was based in Oxford Brookes, and explored issues around assessment: http://www.brookes.ac.uk/aske/. It was tricky to determine what was happening with this or other CETLs next year, but it was good to see the hundred flowers blooming from the whole CETL project.
3. There are clearly difficult times ahead for the HE sector, and a need was felt to contribute to the policy agenda, although a clear sense didn’t emerge from the conference about how to do this.
At its best, the conference offered serious, considered, and well-informed explorations of critical issues in contemporary HE. The main things most of us took away were pragmatic and practice-focused, but as Sheila suggested in the closing debate, there had been richness in methodological matters as well, and these could offer further opportunities for developing practices in the sector. For example, one presentation reflected on the use of appreciative enquiry as an alternative to problem based learning in teaching occupational therapy. This has stimulated Sheila into thinking how this approach might be incorporated into her own teaching practice.
However, we felt that there was a need for the occasional stepping back, giving the ‘so what’ and wider picture around individual practices. Clearly this can often be the case with conference organisation, but it was a shame that there was not more chance to make connections between discussions of practice on the local scale and broader issues of policy and pedagogic directions.
Our own symposium went well, thank you for asking, and we had a good in-depth discussion about the ways CILASS has supported our learning and teaching. More details on this are available from any of us; and if anyone would like more detailed notes or a look at individual papers, please get in touch. Sheila has put her short paper online at http://tinyurl.com/ycblhgc.
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